


The Crimes of Gilbraith

by alephthirteen



Series: Do a Proper Job of It [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Check With Your Mediwitch Before Using, Death Magic Can Have Side Effects, F/F, F/M, Female Harry Complaining to Hermione about Ron in the Girl's Washroom, Ginny Weasley Is a Schemer, Harry/Female Harry are actually powerful, Hogwarts Has Danger Enough, Involuntary shapeshifting, Male Harry Listening to Ron Prattle on About Hermione, Psuedo-Voldemort Plotline, Sharing the Same Body, Sharing the Same Mind, There's a Giant Spider Infestation for Fucks Sake, Which Really Makes things Confusing When the Golden Trio is Really the Golden Three and a Half, Wizarding World Being MORE ACCEPTING About Something for Once, honestly, rather than just stupidly lucky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:47:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28241895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alephthirteen/pseuds/alephthirteen
Summary: The Dark Lord has fallen.  He went to the Potter house and never came back out.  People say they saw Severus Snape come out carrying something but that's rubbish.  Someone like Snape wouldn't have escaped without his Master's help.  After the aurors showed up, everyone took the hint and buttoned their shutters.-----Harry has a problem.  He's not only Harry.  Some days, usually when it's most problematic, he wakes up as a girl version of himself.  Same eyes, same hair, scar on the right not the left.The Dursleys aren't exactly thrilled.-----Hermione never gets on with other girls.  She's too 'boyish' they say, as if actually cracking a book and sometimes not putting a bow in her hair make her some kind of hairy troll.ORThe story of how Harry and Aubrey Potter are, and aren't, the same person and how their time at Hogwarts mucks things up for them.  The story of how the love felt for the late Lily Potter by her friends casts a warm shadow over her orphaned children and it really works out brilliantly in the end.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Minerva McGonagall/Rita Skeeter, Nymphadora Tonks/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Do a Proper Job of It [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2070399
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not going to lie. This started as straight up a dig at 'Joanne' being a transphobe. I'd been tickling around the idea of a trans-centric story but honestly, that felt beyond my reach to respectfully portray in terms of dysphoria and trauma. So I went with a somewhat lighter gender-fluidity/multiple identity take. That said, I can still attack some of her arguments, which are bullshit anyway, without straying into topics that are beyond my meager skill.  
> Magic's neat like that.
> 
> I'd also never had a story with a male POV character (split POV), so that'll be fun.
> 
> This story is light on Ron, with Ginny being the prime Weasley for reasons that are eventually obvious. Hermione will feature heavily because why else would you even bother with the Potterverse?
> 
> It skims over book one and two and goes heavily AU after the end of book three. It will contain frequent sexual elements (consenting, same age characters) as time goes on. Eventually it will be sort of one of those "studmuffin Harry" stories but non-toxically and with a pretty major twist in "studmuffin Aubrey" getting just as many girls.

Were someone to look at Privett Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey on this rather unpleasantly brisk evening, one would think that it was a perfectly respectable street of respectable people. Nice homes--no crooked shutters, no sir--and flowerbeds are maintained to the neat thirty-three and three quarters degree of rotation specification with relation to the front walks.

This gives them a sort of jaunty, devil-may-care approach. Like they'd just happened on a whim.

Never more than three cars in the carpark. Nothing posh or stuck up or of a competitive nature.

Respectable.

The woman walking up and down the street like a soldier on patrol knows better. The best of these people are bizarre and the worst, vile and hypocritical.

Her name is Minerva Maleficia McGonagall and no one's noticed her. Not merely since she's clever--though no one has found anyone as clever yet--but because she's a truly clever _witch_ and clever witches go wherever they need to go. A witch is never noticed, unless she means to be. She's taken the shape of a small gray tabby. Were anyone to look too closely, they would think the tabby's eyes a bit too watchful of them, more so than in the usual way a cat's are, and might wonder at the fact that the hair on the cat's head is colored so that it looks like the shadow of a severe bun hairdo is being cast at all times.

There's a second floor parlor on each home, not visible at street level and some have it as a second living room, others a bedroom with massive windows. As part of her patrol, she's climbed every tree to peek in every window.

Each house except Number 4 and Number 11 has planted a fat pine tree to block view from nosy neighbors. Not enough to block view from clever cats climbing up trees. The man in Number 2 is pouring a can of beer over his son's head and yelling. The woman in Number 9 is crying and putting entirely too much black eyeshadow on to hide the bruise. The man in Number 8 has his wife tied to the coffee table with his feet up on her, though she's reserving judgment there. There's a riding crop in his hand and these aren't the sort of people who can afford a horse. The woman in Number 6 is a real puzzlement. There's a young woman with a suit jacket on that says "Grunning's Drills" on a little embroidered patch. She's strikingly pretty. The sharp point of her stiletto is in the man of the house's lap. He's wearing a Grunning's jacket too but judging by the baby's bonnet he's got on, the gag in his mouth and the fact that this woman--probably his secretary--has her hand in his wife's nickers, he's not the boss at all.

It's the people in Number 4 that scare her the most. Where everyone else's upstairs parlor says something about them--good or not--this room is simply the same parlor as down below, only with somehow even more aggressively dull furniture. All the other houses say 'this is our real self' with what they hide behind the pine tree, and she thinks that this house is saying that it's occupants don't have a real self. Worse, that whatever they do have is so ghastly that they'd rather broadcast this hollow-headed nonsense than admit it.

The roar of a motorcycle startles her and with a rather unprofessional yowl, she bolts across the way to Number 5. There, a sweet old lady named Mrs. Figg has left out long black robes, a pointy witch's hat and a bowl of cream with a plate to cover it.

"Good evening, Minerva."

Her back door is open and inside, Mrs. Figg is calmly reading the Daily Prophet, held high over her face so that Minerva can change. She adjusts her hair so that the quickly-gathered yet still frighteningly neat bun is in the _exact_ place that its shadowy friend is on the cat's head.

Mrs. Figg chuckles.

"You go to a great deal of trouble to hide that miraculous hair of yours, Minnie."

Minerva makes a 'harrumph' noise that would have Sir Winston Churchill turning out his pockets and promising to never touch a drop of whiskey again.

"Kept the boys off, didn't it?"

"It did, come to think. Not the girls, so I recall."

"No," Minerva laughs before checking her reflection in the mirror and adjusting her hat. "Not the girls."

"Speaking of, how's Lolita?" Mrs. Figg asks. "Been more than a with the same one. True love?"

"You mean _Rita?"_

"You're shagging a little tramp who writes nasty gossip, Minnie. Who's just barely half your age. I think my name for her is better."

Minerva whips off her hat and swats Mrs. Figg with it.

"You would think that, Fiona. Always were a tease."

"Just not the sort of tease you wanted."

"Aye. Not the sort I wanted. The sort I _needed_."

Mrs. Figg smiles.

"Someone in our year had to be into blokes."

\-----

The motorcycle thunders out of the sky and onto the carpark for the chemist's shop at the end of the lane with a loud shriek of rubber on cement. Great belches of flame come out of the tailpipes and the whole thing is dark red with glinting, shiny paint. It's a motorcycle sized that a giant could ride it.

The man astride it is not a giant, though he's often mistaken for one. He's about ten feet tall. His worn boots are the size of watering pails and his hands about the size of dustbin lids.

His name is Rubeus Hagrid and he's trying so very hard to be strong right now. Unsuccessfully.

The baby he's carrying hasn't stopped crying all the way from Godric's hollow. Hagrid's great with babies, all sorts of them really. Dragon babies, giant spider babies, three-headed dog babies...he can be a dad to nearly anything.

Not now. The baby in his arms is the child of two of his old friends. He knew them as school children and they were nice to him. The young lady more than her beau, but he was nice to Hagrid when he was nasty to a lot of his schoolmates. Not many are nice to a fellow with big feet and not the greatest sense of motion. The students who forgave him for bumping into them are small enough in number that they could be his groomsmen, if Hagrid ever got married.

Lily Potter would put on men's clothes and go as a groomsman without a blink if someone asked.

The streetlight over his head goes out with a pop and the light inside it whizzes down the street and then goes down an invisible drain.

A fresh wail comes from the babe. Hurts him worse than a manticore's sting.

"Easy there, little prin...er...princess at the moment...Back to prince. Cods, that's confusing!"

"Hello there, Hagrid."

"Merlin's slippers!"

There behind him is Professor McGonagall, deputy headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and number two on the five-person list of people who've ever been nice to him.

"Professor McGonagall! Ye startled me. Then again, ye do move quiet," he mutters. "Ye could show the shadowcats in the Forest how it's done, I often think."

"Simply a matter of moving _precisely,_ Hagrid."

She makes a motion to indicate he should bend down.

"How are they?"

"He's fine, I thi-"

The stern look she gives Hagrid reminds him of a nasty lecture he got for transfiguring his teacup not into a rat, as asked, but into a capybara. He'd always wanted to see one. He'd overdone it too, enlarging the beast. The faculty spent all night chasing a rodent the size of a draft horse until they found it munching away in the greenhouses.

" _They_. Just because we can see the boy right now, doesn't mean the girl isn't there too."

"Er, right."

"They, Hagrid. That's important. We're not sure what the mechanism is but this part of the prophecy lines up. Boy shall die. Boy shall live. Girl shall live. The three-point path is never safe."

She frowns.

"That three point path bit, we're not sure on yet."

"It's ju-"

Hagrid rubs his snotty tears on his coat sleeves.

"The other one didn't die, did h-they?"

Minerva shakes her head.

"No, they didn't. But I suspect that the ward Lily put around young Harry's crib with her dying breath included hope for _all_ her children. Even ones she never got to have. What's happening to them--a son that's also a daughter--is merely the expression of her last wish. Magic doing its best to understand what it's told to do."

"Lily was a clever one," Hagrid sighs. "Wasn't she?"

She puts her hand on his in a comforting way. It's rather like a mouse's paw trying to comfort a bear but he's glad of it.

"Lily was, and through her children _still is_ one of our best."

"Have ye thought about names, then?"

"Names, Hagrid?"

"Well, if it keeps happening, I mean…"

"Ah. Yes. If the feminine and masculine energies keep switching which one is expressed physically, I do think that a name will be needed. For the poor girl's sanity, at least. She'll need something for her muggle friends to call her. Muggle papers, too. Which will be a joy to create. Dumbledore will make it my problem, no doubt."

She reaches out for the child's hand, which immediately grips her finger. She says something in a language she speaks but Hagrid doesn't. Doesn't quite narrow it down. There's probably a dozen of those. He can feel the magic in it. Lots of magic. Moving slow, like she was pushing an ocean though a tea strainer.

He never finished his schooling at Hogwarts so he doesn't know what she's doing, not really.

"Aubrey," McGonagall tells him.

"Aubrey, eh?"

"Harold comes from the world powerful in Old Germanic. So does Aubrey."

"Do we have to give 'em to the muggles?"

"I assure you, I feel the same. His aunt and uncle are the absolute worst muggles I've ever met. But you know as well as I that the prophecy about You-Know-Who didn't end with that and prophecies tend to end at the ending of a story, not the middle."


	2. Chapter 2

"GET UP, BOY!" his Uncle Vernon shouts.

Harry jerks awake.

Dudley is busy jumping on the stair right above his cupboard. He shields his face from the falling dust with one hand and gropes around for his glasses with the other.

With his glasses firmly on his nose--Dudley hasn't broken them in almost a week--he reaches for the torch. The Dursley's wouldn't install a lightbulb when the first one broke, so he's using an old torch and batteries Mrs. Figg lets him have.

He keeps a small bit of broken mirror in here so he can check his face every morning. He knows _what_ he'll look like. Messy hair, green eyes, little scar on his head like a lightning bolt. He just never knows _who_ he'll look like. Anytime he looks at a mirror, Harry doesn't seem himself. He sees Other-Harry, whichever one he isn't that day. Sometimes its him, sometimes it's a girl named Aubrey who is...also him. He wakes up each day never knowing for sure. No one's ever tried to explain it to him and protesting once to the Dursleys that 'Harry' was 'Aubrey' today earned him three casts, his first and only visit to a doctor and convinced him never to tell anyone about it ever again.

Aubrey's great. She knows everything he knows and vice versa. It's crazy. It's like they're the same person, she's his 'inner self' or a 'past life' but that only happens on TV and in fantasy novels. Harry's really only sure that she exists and he's glad.

They never argue with each other and they mostly like the same things. She's the one that's actually got friends because the Dursleys refuse to believe she exists so sometimes she can sneak out and hang out with the other girls in the neighborhood. He gets to enjoy her memories of her friends in his dreams.

He's looking at Harry in the mirror, so he turned into Aubrey in his sleep.

"Perfect," Aubrey groans. "Well, Harry. See you tomorrow. Be you tomorrow, maybe."

The Mirror-Harry smiles and waves as if to remind her he'll still be there when she puts the mirror down.

"I SAID GET UP, BOY!" Vernon thunders.

\-----

Aubrey tucks the mirror in the little bend in the wood so she can use it without needing a hand. She messes up her hair, since Harry's is always scruffy and hers behaves better. She licks her finger and scrubs a bit of muck off her cheek. She got the mud indoors, courtesy of dust on the inside of the cupboard and Dudley's little tantrum with the garden hose.

If her aunt or uncle ever realize that Aubrey's scar is on the right and Harry's is on the left, she's really in for it.

"BOY! IF YOU'RE NOT OUT HERE IN TW-"

Aubrey yanks the door open.

"I'm here!" she squeaks.

"Something wrong with you?"

She makes herself cough as hard as she can, trying to make her voice more like Harry's.

"No, sir."

"That's...right," he says, smiling and waving the ruler at her.

"There's nothing wrong with you beca-"

"Because I'm not special and I don't matter."

"Yes! Correct!"

Vernon pats the top of her head.

"Now go into the foyer and wait for our guest."

"Yes, sir."

Dudley is perched on the second to last step, kicking his fat legs against the floor. He's probably unhappy that he's got his school jacket and trousers on.

"Mummy, Harry looks like a _girl!"_ He cackles.

 _I am a girl!_ She thinks.

 _We're a girl,_ the bits of Harry in her head remind her. _And we're a boy, too._

"He's certainly not going to attract the right sort of women _,_ " Aunt Petunia sniffs from her place next to the parlor.

Aunt Petunia is dressed up in the orange dress, pink gloves and bottle-green hat she wears to church on Sundays. It's odd, for her to be dressed up. She usually only dresses up when someone who Vernon owes money comes by, or someone she wants to get an invite from. She's dressed to make someone like her and but Vernon's asking Aubrey to show them in.

When the Dursleys want to impress someone, they make Aubrey go stay in the basement in the broken freezer.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

"Well go on, boy!" Vernon hisses, his face the same color as Dudley's red galoshes. "Open it."

Aubrey opens the door.

A tall woman in a long black dress with a sharply pointed hat on her head is on the front steps. She doesn't carry a handbag, like Aunt Petunia does. Aubrey can't see her face—too much sun behind her—but she can see that the woman is tall, like Aunt Petunia but leaner too. She also stands very stiffly, like someone put a pole in the ground and started working clay around it.

"Welcome to the Dursleys," Aubrey tells her.

"Good morning, young lady. My name is Minerva. You're Aubrey, correct?"

"It's Harry, ma'am."

"Is it now?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"How discreet of you."

"Discreet, ma'am?"

"Why yes!" 

Aubrey is having a conversation with a grownup who is answering her questions. This is _crazy_. 

"To be discreet is to be careful and circumspect in one's speech or actions, especially in order to avoid causing offense or to gain an advantage," the woman calmly explains. "According to Oxford, at any rate."

_Now I have to ask her what 'circumspect' means._

"HARRY!" Vernon growls, waving three of his sausage like fingers. "Make her go away."

Aubrey wants to ask how she (or Harry) could ever make someone do anything. She can't get someone to do something if she asks. Only sometimes works if she cries.

"I assure you, that will not be happening. I have every right to be here."

"I'm terribly sorry," Aunt Petunia sputters. "The Child Services people didn't mention that our usual caseworker wasn't available."

"He was caught taking bribes at work."

"Ahh," Petunia simpers. "Dreadful."

"No morality left in this country," Vernon huffs.

"Mummy, what's morality?" Dudley asks.

The strange woman laughs softly when Dudley asks that.

"I hope the bribes didn't have anything to do with our case?" Petunia asks.

"Oh no," the woman replies. "The bribes had something to do with his neighbor's canoe, Vaseline jelly and a latex skirt, I believe. No, no. Your case will be decided on its own merits. That's why they sent me, actually."

"Oh…" Petunia chortles. "Welcome to our home!"

She thought she sounded cheerful, but the Harry in her head reminds her that he can hear what Audrey sounds like. That's what Aubrey sounded like three Tuesdays ago when she asked Uncle Vernon to stop hitting her.

Who on Earth could possibly scare aunt Petunia?


	3. From the Ministry Archives - October 31, 1981

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This modifies the Lily and Snape dynamic to have Snape stay as a (distant) friend as a an adult. He's still 100% smitten with her, but rationally knows that he can't have that.

**October 31, 1981**

Lavenham, England

(eleven miles from the village of Godric's Hollow)

"Ah!"

Pain lances down his arm.

"Severus?"

"I'm quite all right!" he snaps.

Rolling up his sleeve, he looks at the Dark Mark. He felt it call him, demand his presence at the Dark Lord's side but then it just _stopped_ and he doesn't feel anything from it. Not the blissful warmth of reward for a task well done or the thrashing agony of punishment administered from afar and from on high. At minimum there's always an awareness. The skin-curdling realization that his flesh is enslaved to the flesh of another. He can feel someone else's pulse, their sweat, their tension and worse his mind knows that it's _not his arm._ Like having a grindylow larvae in there.

Now though, nothing. All of a sudden, it's like any other tattoo. He didn't design the curse--Bellatrix did, Merlin help us all--but having brewed the ink, he knows that there's only one way for it to not channel any sensation whatsoever.

There's another knock, this time on the inside of his door.

"You sure you're all right?"

He spins his chair around. It's the muggle wife of the boarding house's owner, Mrs. Galverson, wiping her hands on a dish towel and peering into his study with a sense of unease. Tadbolt Galverson might or might not be a wizard. After all, the distinguishing line between an nearly-useless wizard and simply a barmy old man is, regrettably, rather faint. Severus could afford better, even with his plummeting lot in life. The gold in one galleon goes for more than a hundred muggle pounds. The place is simple, the other tenants aren't the sort to care about smells, and since the key rule is 'no lady callers' there's simply no way to break the rules.

Only one Lily Evans, after all.

"Yes..."

"When you drag a word out like that, you sound like a snake, young fellow. Perhaps an overdramatic actor."

"My deepest...apologies."

She chuckles.

"All right. Everyone's a comedian. Good night, Severus."

He waits until she's trundled off then reaches into the desk for his wand. He points it at the doorframe, the window, and then his bed.

_"Silencio. Alohamora. Homeinem imitatus."_

His room is on the fourth floor. Others pay more to have first and second floor rooms--mostly for the 'lady callers'--but its far easier to apparate before hitting the ground with a bit of lead-up.

* * *

**October 31, 1981**

Loch Muc Criosan's north shore, across from Hogwarts Castle  
  


Hogwarts is so close and so uselessly far. There's no swimming that mile of icy water and the gates and wards will be down after curfew in mid term. There's no getting across at this time of night without a boat or Merlin forbid, a thestral and bridle.

"Dumbledore!"

"There's no need to shout, Severus. I thought you might be coming."

Severus finds himself facing a bemused Dumbledore, his stunner practically crammed back in his wand tip by the force of Dumbledore's shield charm.

"Apologies, headmaster."

"I did apparate behind you Severus. An unintentional test, but a spy who wasn't aware someone was behind him would be no use at all. So bravo."

He rips his shirtsleeve open to show the mark. He can conjure a new button later.

"Is it over?"

"I'm not sure, Severus. No one is."

"Speak to me like your _colleague_ , not your _student_ for a damn change!" Severus bellows. "You did fuck all for me when I was a student and James Potter made my life hell. So act like the man I know as a friend and colleague. I demand it."

Dumbledore points his wand at a fallen log and twists it into a sort of rough fencepost for them to lean on.

"What I'm sure of is that twenty minutes ago, a man matching Voldemort's description was seen entering Godric's Hollow."

"H-h-has th-"

He snaps his teeth together like it would banish his stutter.

"Has anyone sent up a Dark Mark?"

"No, not yet."

Severus doesn't wait for the rest.

* * *

**October 31, 1981**

Godric's Hollow

"Shove off, mate! This is a crime scene." 

"STUPEFY!"

The policeman tips backward into the snow-dusted hedges and sight of one of their 'protectors' falling sends the sheep scattering. _They_ don't need to know the spell was non-lethal.

The house is a ruin. The roof is entirely missing, and the only walls standing on the second floor are skeletons of timber and paint, warped together in glowing curls like knotted yarn by a blast that no muggle explosion of goal or natural gas could possibly generate. Most of the east half is gone. The kitchen was there, Lily told him at the alumni dinner. She was big as a house and chortled every few words when the baby moved. James, for once, didn't follow Severus all night one half-step away with jealous murder in his eyes.

Maybe he figured that his claim was already staked.

Maybe he finally realized what Severus already knew. Having Lily Evans--he'll never call her Lily _Potter_ \--as a friend visiting for tea is worth James Potter as a lifelong nuisance. 

A kitchen too big for their needs, Lily admitted. 

"Maybe if I ever talk James into more," he mumbles. Lily's words spill out of him as the memories of their last chat puncture line between sanity and lunacy.

A sharp cry splits the frigid air.

A baby's cry.

\-----

The boy has Lily's eyes, thank Merlin. Green. Absolutely _limitless_. Like the whole of creation went into it. Like every green thing to grow upon the Earth was rendered down to make just two drops of the color. The poor wretch has James' hair, and his jaw, and really everything else. 

Lily's eyes. That's important. That's enough.

He discovered couldn't alter Lily's body in any way--whatever foulness the Dark Lord unleashed won't let him close her eyes--so he dragged the crib away and lifted the child into his arms, sitting down beside her body.

"Harry," Severus remembers. "She named you Harry."

The boy babbles in his arms and he looks down. Tiny fingers swing upwards towards his face.

"Regrettably...I've little experience with children."

He babbles again, as if daring Severus to look him in the eye.

It's Lily's child. He relents.

This isn't the same child. Can't be. A casual observer would never see it but this face is softer, more delicate. This isn't James Potter's _son._ This is Lily Evan's _daughter_ he's holding all of a sudden. All Lily, not only the eyes.

"SEVERUS!" Dumbledore hisses from the top of the stairs. "ARE YOU MAD?"

"I might be," he admits. "For a moment, I though the child changed into a girl."

Minerva apparates silently into a ruined room next to them. The cat of her animagus form would make more noise walking than she does punching a hole in reality. The woman could be history's deadliest auror if her precision were ever turned to _destructive_ magic.

"I've had nightmares where Severus goes mad," she tells Dumbledore. "Thankfully, this isn't one of them."

The child babbles again. Children do tend to light up around Albus Dumbledore. Besides being good at fundraising, it's why he has the job.

"Amazing," Albus breathes. "I daresay that this is not anything I could have anticipated."

"MY FRIEND IS DEAD!" 

"Lily Evans," he chokes. "...is _dead._ What does it matter? What does _anything_ matter?"

"She is, yes. But Lord Voldemort's broken body is at the bottom of the stairs and even without that reminder, I think you and I both are aware just how remarkable that woman could be. Come along, Severus."


	4. This Will Not Do, Albus!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where a there's a limit to what six decades of friendship gets you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this fanon, a wizard's or witch's magic only takes shape during puberty. Witches especially. It's a fairly common occurrence for a witch's first spell-level use of magic to be when she gets her first period or close to it.
> 
> Age of Hogwarts admission is not on birthday alone, but rather the child's magical age as determined by physical examination, scrying of the child's aura, and a mind-reading to determine their maturity.
> 
> All children in the same year (1st, 2nd, 3rd) have the same maturity but it's conceivable that there's a spread, particularly at the beginning. Girls tend to start to develop earlier, so a witch might be eligible as young as 11.  
> Many families hold daughters back a year on purpose for this reason.
> 
> Most wizards not until 12 or most likely 13. A late bloomer (magically speaking) might be 14 or 15 when they begin, regardless of their physical state.
> 
> \-----
> 
> Some timeline details and thoughts on Wizard/Witch physiology.
> 
> Canonically, given that Dumbledore was born in 1881 and that by 1927 ("Crimes of Grindelwald" movie) he was already a respected Transfiguration teacher and McGonagall as a young woman was seemingly already his right hand, she was probably his student somewhere in the 1910s so I decided that she was born October 4, 1901 (her birth _day_ is canonical).
> 
> That means by 1991 when Harry starts school, she's 90 years old and Dumbledore is 110 and seemingly magically in his prime and as physically capable as a muggle man in his 50s or maybe in his 60s who took good care of himself.
> 
> Given that canonically, Professor and later Headmaster Armando Dippet is documented to have lived from 1637 to 1992 (354 years old) and was healthy enough to be headmaster up through 1971 not only is wizard aging slowed down, it's gentler. 
> 
> One wizard named Barry Winkle (through either excellent health or unknown means) lived to be 755 as of 1991 and held a party that was reported in the Daily Prophet as having "millions" of guests.
> 
> It's safe to say that wizards and muggles age very differently.  
> \-----

_"He who controls the Daily Prophet controls the world."_  
 **  
**Conventional wisdom among Ministers of Magic, attributed to a 14th-century Minister

* * *

**Minerva McGonagall - 1991**

Hogwarts Castle, south shore of Loch Muc Criosan

Faculty Residences, Great Hall's Tower, Ninth Floor

Unscrewing the whiskey's cap, she pours a healthy splash into her coffee--she can blame Rita for giving up tea--and pulls out a piece of parchment.

She sets a mind-misting charm around her chair. A full brain-storming charm would soak the carpet and might set off some of her instruments. The last time, she had a borrowed phantasmal scale from Snape she'd forgotten about on her worktable. Apparently a stray thought-bolt missed the parchment and struck it. The other half of the contraption was located at his desk and reacted similarly. While seeing Severus Snape with still-sparking skin and no eyebrows had a certain nasty amusement to it, there's no need to be repeating the experience. 

When she was seventeen, this whiskey cost her twenty pence, if she recalls. The first sip she had was utterly ghastly. Not even worth it to try and pluck up her courage to talk to the girl she fancied. A few decades on her shelf has turned it into something quite pleasant.

The Potter boy--the Potter children, rather--are proving to be a challenge. Dumbledore gave her three tasks. Keep them safe, situate them in wizarding society, and get them ready. The first is easy enough. Raising blood-wards based on Lily's blood was a trifle. Like most of the Order of the Phoenix, Lily and James left vials so that family members could be protected. The woman's blood was so pure, so _red_ and was searing hot to the touch. One glance told her it was powerful. If she had to guess, there was more love than human blood in that vial. Most mothers couldn't will their child to survive the Killing Curse. 

Some of her better work, if she says so herself. A flock of dragons could slam against the inner layer and be reduced to wisps of steam. The muggle assassin that some disgruntled Death Eater hired--as if she hadn't accounted for _muggles--_ puked out his own lungs, liver and testicles before he succumbed. At least the stasis rune kept the mess from smelling until her next shift. Albus didn't blink when she asked him for a raise after cleaning it up.

Her gentle llegimancy of the child this morning--probably easier that it was the girl expressed at the time--showed her such belittlement and beatings that she found herself gripping her wand and wondering which of the muggle's kitchen contraptions could be made into the most torturous weapons. Potter's been a favorite topic of Rita's long as they've known each other but under strict press blackout. She gets to write the first story on them since the night they were orphaned. There's an article in the pipeline so nasty that if Fudge _doesn't_ have the boy and girl removed from that terrible place by the auror force, he'll be signing his resignation letter by dawn the next day. 

Placing him is a challenge. There's no Potters left but the young--and unaware--Lord Harry and Lady Aubrey. Molly Weasley would take them but Molly Weasley would take any child for any reason and she has a full quidditch team to raise. A flip through the rest of the files on possible students in the next few years didn't help much. Adrienne Zabini always wanted another son but she's not sure how the famously close-minded Black Widow would deal with the dual nature of the child. Then there's the terrible concept of a wizard like Harry and a witch like Aubrey growing up under her tender tutelage. She might as well cut Voldemort's corpse in two equal halves, castrate one half and reanimate it right now.

Anastasia Greengrass, perhaps. Gentle enough. Neutral family. To the extent they ever fell in with Voldemort's lot it was mostly to take in wounded and having caught them in the empty classrooms more than once, she suspects that Annie mostly did that so she'd have an excuse to spend time with her tongue in Narcissa Malfoy. 

The Bones family would a good choice. Amelia Bones would raise them to be a force of nature with an iron clad sense of honor. Minerva's not sure that she wants to take young Susan's limited time with her aunt away though. That office chair in the Auror's headquarters sees more of Amelia than Susan does.

Sirius is the most logical choice, close as a shadow with the parents and family in sacred vow if not blood. Out of the picture in Azkaban. It's never sat right with her that the boy's sworn godson betrayed Lily and James to their death. They're called Unbreakable Vows for a reason. Assuming it was the most basic and minimal godfather's vow, intending to have Lily and James killed but Harry _spared_ might wiggle through the phrasing.

Sirius' true intention and likeliest outcome would still have to have been to the benefit of little Harry and there's no amount of mental gymnastics to get to orphaning an infant being a good thing.

Foster placement might have to wait. The Potter children won't stay healthy much longer if she can't split the two selves apart. She's amazed that Harry's magic is intact while supporting Aubrey's non-physical body and vice versa. Aubrey's aura is smaller and sharper edged and burns far brighter, rather like Minerva's own compared to Dumbledore. Minerva could have cut Voldemort's heart in half without breaking the skin if she got a lucky hit in a duel. Albus could have left a crater down to the bedrock but not taken his hand off without taking the arm.

The intensity and density of a witch's aura is the only thing feeding Harry's looser, larger magical core. Aubrey will waste away and he'll never gain useful control if they stay joined too much longer. They need to be apart before she bleeds. Witches who start to bloom with their magic impeded meet nasty, rapid ends. Their eleventh birthday is weeks away, making them eligible to attend.

That's more of a puzzle. She needs a sort of magic that can fundamentally reshape the self. She can only think of vampirism, werewolfism, metamorphamagism (probably too limited to split in half) and learning to be an animagus. None of those work because they can't be tuned. So unless she can somehow _force_ the animal form's shape and even so, she'd have to pick an animal that splits in half naturally. 

The Boy Who Lived and Now Can Turn Into a Sea Cucumber just isn't helpful. That one, Rita would publish against her complaints.

A buzzing around her head makes her put the notebook down.

"How'd you get in?"

The acid-green scarab beetle lands on the notepad and scratches 'p-o-r-t-k-e-y' and 'p-e-e-v-e-s' out with a claw. Minerva chuckles. She's crossed swords with that manic ghost more than usual lately and he must have decided that giving her wife a secret path to her quarters was a way to win some leniency from Minerva.

"Welcome home, dear."

Rita changes back to her true form in a smear of green light and bends down to remove her heels.

"My feet are killing me," she grouses. "Fudge ought to be in Azkaban for the new witches' dress code in Headquarters."

Minerva fishes the chain out of her robes and unclips it. Sliding the ring off, she takes Rita's hand and puts it on. Rita takes her glasses off and waves them accusingly.

"I can already hear you thinking too loud, Minnie. I'm going to make some pumpkin cakes because I need sugar. You've got half an hour to finish up before I'm on that couch with you, banishing your quill and trying out this jinxed muggle radio I bought in Knockturn Alley."

\-----

Three quarters of a century ago, she staggered into her parents home, soaked with rain and crying. Her mother Isolde took one look at Minerva and asked which girl broke her heart. For the longest time, Hogwarts was her only love. It was unfair to ask any partner to live here almost year round, so remote from nearly everything and where apparition, floo travel and portkeying is impossible within ten miles of the outer walls--denying all normal forms of commuting--not to mention the great cloud of teenage insanity that leeches off their magic and coats every surface. Her salary could provide of course, but the sort of witch who would be kept as a decoration is the exact sort of witch that she _wouldn't care for_ in the first place. 

Over so many years, about two dozen students figured her preferences out. Some threw caution to the winds and ended up transferred out by Dumbledore, Merlin bless him. He never even asked if anything happened. Their trust in each other is complete. No one else who fought in the Battle of Nuremgard castle knew who Grindelwald had once been to Dumbledore. Anyone else he could've asked to take that last grim march would have taken a chance to kill the dark wizard if one arose. Would have saved a mountain or three but also would have broken her friend's heart.

One student who fancied her took a particularly odd tack: one Rita Belson, a half-blood girl with gift for transfiguring living animals and a truly bizarre set of fluorescent robes of her own making. She transferred out in third year (to Ilvermorny, it turned out) only to resurface in London, going by her muggle mother's maiden name of Skeeter. She tracked Minerva down in the Leaky Cauldron during one of her three-year sabbaticals. To say she was shocked to hear that Rita pulled up roots and moved overseas alone _because_ of Minerva would be an understatement. Rita wanted to get some of the world under her feet and knew that if she vanished from Minerva's life without admitting her crush and approached as an adult, no one could ever accuse Minerva of mistreating a student. There was also a detailed series of notes on women, veela, and one half-vampire she'd bedded, which she presented blushingly as if to prove her skills. Like she was in a interview for a teaching assistant. It took them three more dates to deal with that dragon-sized pile of awkward. The first date when they actually started thinking about making a go of it was almost a month after they met.

Minerva doesn't donate to the _Quibbler_ and Rita doesn't so much as think about reporting about herself, Dumbledore, or any student not of legal age without asking first.

Her readers probably don't realize that her fanciful, sensationalized profiles of 'Prefects to Watch' are actually vetted by child and teacher alike. Student dramatics are juicy enough as-is.

A honey-glazed pumpkin cake appears in the edge of her vision.

"Brain off," Rita demands. "Cuddle me."

She sets the notepad aside and opens her arms.

* * *

**Albus Dumbledore - 1991**

Hogwarts Castle, south shore of Loch Muc Criosan

Headmaster's Residences, Fifteenth Floor (accessible only by invisible staircase)

There's a gray tabby sitting on his kitchen table when he comes in. It hisses as soon as he shuts the door.

"Minerva. I take it I've offended?"

She bats a sheet of parchment off the table. Curious as to see what's got his friend so worked up as to stay in her animal shape out of spite, he picks it up.

"Ah."

She shifts back, brandishing her hat at him. Scarier than brandishing her wand, in his view. She only takes off her hat when she's _angry_ and she uses her wand all day.

"This will not do, Albus! This isn't a list of ideas, it's barely a field of inkblots! How can we call ourselves champions of the light if we can't find a better plan than raising these children to be slaughtered?"

"I realize that!" he hisses. "Pains me too," he sighs.

"I have precious few friends left in the Ministry and they can't get me acess to Voldemort's body. The aurors loyal to the Order of the Phoenix are few in number and not exactly high-ranked. They're on execution-watch duty only rarely and never without uncommitted aurors also present. The only sure thing is the prophecy. Everything else is guesswork."

She sniffs.

"Then you and I should get to guessing. That child will not be sacrificed by you, not while I live and breathe."

"You're passion for our students is always appreciated, Professor."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Muc" is pig in Scottish Gaelic and "Criosan" is wart or boil. I decided that the lake named the castle built on its shores.


	5. Ironic Punishment and Inappropriate Decor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Tonks and her Forever Girl get their pre-game interrupted by a desperate plea from the Order of the Pheonix.

**Tonks**

12 Grimmauld Place

Getting a muggle television wasn't especially hard. Silver sickles trade for dozens of pounds each. Gold galleons, hundreds. With both Sirius and Bellatrix in jail, and Narcissa being all Malfoy-ed up, Tonks is the closest to a claimant to the Black fortune as there is. She can't draw but a fraction but she can make withdrawals until and unless she does something un-pureblood herself.

She bought the biggest model she could, charmed the wall so it sits flush behind a tapestry, put a storm rune on the plug since there's no getting an electrician in here, then hooked it up to a 'blu-ray' player. A strange box that takes some sort of crystalline pancakes.

So now this odd, scruffy, weird man has a face tall as she is and the careful, stern ginger is a bit smaller because of the camera angle.

"This show is absolute trash, Toasty!" she calls into the guest bedroom.

"Figure out how to look like Scully and get in here!" her girlfriend hollers back.

She waves her hand to hit the pause button on the remote, which she left on the mantle. If she moves it, Tonks knows herself well enough to know she'll never see it again.

Easiest to do the body first, she's always felt. She drops her robes and turns sideways, similar to how the actress facing on screen.

"Tits a bit bigger...there. Lose a few inches height...done. Sweet Merlin! Those collarbones are going to be a challenge."

"KREACH-"

She spins, smacking the doddering elf into the wall with a wandless levitation charm.

In the window to the back garden, a sleek brown barn owl is staring at her. Quite judgmentally.

_Merlin's nose hair. That's McGonagall's owl._

Tonks summons her wand and revives Kreacher.

"Did Kreacher offend, Mistress Nymphadora?" he simpers, already curling in to protect his skull from the beating he expects.

"The fault is mine. You startled me and startled aurors zap things. Maybe apparate into the next room and knock on the door, yeah? Meanwhile, toss together some bacon for the owl and I'll need help collecting ingredients for a cake. Help yourself to the bacon and some frosting, please."

"Kreacher can makes cakeses, Mistress Nymphadora."

"No, Kreacher. You can, but this is a sorry-we-didn't-shag cake for Bekka, so it has to come from me."

"Kreacher doesn't knows, but Kreacher lives to serve."

She loosens the ward on the window and lets in Sextant. She is infamous among recent Hogwarts graduates. As likely to return a much beloved heirloom thought lost in moving out as to serve a letter demanding a return to re-take a NEWT that the proctors botched.

It's worse. The owl is McGongall's but the _seal_ on the letter is Molly Weasley's. It's on muggle paper and scrawled too, which cannot be good. Molly Weasley can write swooping, luscious letters at a pace that would make most professional calligraphers scramble away to update their resumes.

* * *

Dear Tonks,

I hope you're well, dear. Are you eating enough? I realize your figure takes after Sirius more than Narcissa but it's important to stay healthy. Make sure you get some sun too, dear. I don't expect you see much of it on the night patrols. There's this lovely young divinations prodigy and I told her about you. Arthur and I were saying it's criminal really, but how no blushing brides are seeking to woo such an eligible daughter of House Bla-

Yes, yes, Arthur, I'm getting to that!

...Morgana's tits. I wrote that down. Ah, well. This letter is time-sensitive. Needs must.

The Order contacted me this morning. The Potter child is being moved. Tonight at midnight, expect to see an Order member in the back garden. One you have met. Challenge them. If they do not know which part of the ward they are probing, they are not ours and should be dealt with. There are some additional complications that we've discovered with the poor dears health. Not only are you our voice in House Black, the house they will inherit, but child needs not only a mother but needs a metamorphagus' sympathies.

Midnight. Back garden. Be sure they know the rune, the name, and the placement notes visible from inside. Be safe, Tonks.

From the ashes!  
  


* * *

The Order member is McGonagall and the challenge question was her lowest-ever NEWT score.

With her is a small girl with a lightning bolt scar on the right side of her head, piercing emerald eyes and a small, shy smile that drives every bad memory from Tonks' mind. The same smile a sixth-year girl in Diagon Alley gave a scared five-year-old Tonks when she got separated from her mother. She doesn't need a blood-seer or the Directory of Families to know that this is Lily Evan's daughter. Her mother made over, but for James' hopeless black curls. The messy brute had to contribute something. She's wearing torn muggle pajamas--a boy's pajamas--which show all the hallmarks of having been rapidly fixed with a mending charm.

"Tonks, this is Aubrey Potter. Let's get them settled in and we can get you caught up once the poor darling has had a bit of sleep."

They shepherd Aubrey up to Sirius' old room and tuck her in. It's the closest to a clean bedroom, though the number of muggle women on pin-up posters is perhaps extreme for an eleven year old.

The room Tonks and Bekka share is really the only fully functional bedroom. She'd trade but there's a few too many still-smoldering veela feathers, the wreckage of bras she simply _burned_ off Tonks when Bekka wasn't in the mood to wait on a clasp, and because of her errissan heritage, there's materialized emotion strewn everywhere. Spattered lust, exhilaration on the bedposts like frost, chunks of crystallized laughter ground in the carpet and nodules of contentedness stuck in the sheets like those Jolly Ranchers her girlfriend keeps trying to get Tonks hooked on. That and the sex toys, lust potions, stamina pastes, and other alchemical unmentionables strewn all over.

Not child-friendly.

"Aubrey?" Tonks asks once she and McGonagall are alone.

She knows it's rude but this feels like the sort of detail she can't protect the child without.

"I'm sure you've been told of Albus' theory of Sacrificial Love?"

Everyone in the Order has been. It's one of his favorites in the ongoing scramble to figure out how the unstoppable, un-survivable spell not only was survived, but was survived without seeming injury by an infant boy not even weaned. It's come up at each of their twice-monthly dinners here at Grimmauld.

"So Aubrey _is_ Harry?"

"Precisely. You're the first person to get it in one guess. Fifty points to Gryffindor!" McGonagall jokes.

"Metamorphmagus thing. We've got a good intuition for the weird."

"There's another aspect which only Albus, myself, Molly, and now you know. We believe that when Lily wished to protect Harry, some of her dreams of raising a daughter slipped in. In the process of absorbing and negating the curse's intense magic, those manifested physically. Personally, I think the scar anchors them together. When they sleep, sometimes the bodies alternate. Aubrey tells me she uses a mirror to check each morning. Whichever one is in the mirror, is the one not physically present. It's helped her--them--a great deal, I suspect. The ability to switch would help healing alone, given the beatings."

"Beatings?"

She can feel her hair turn barbed and spiky.

"I only became aware quite recently. I promise you that no part of the plan involved leaving Harry and Aubrey there with that going on. The muggle uncle in particular had flummoxed the local caseworkers. When I first met them, Aubrey cringed if I held out my hand without warning her that I was about to. Even to hand over a sweet."

"Merlin! I don't suppose you did the decent thing and killed those muggles?"

"That would be a bit much, dear. Hunting muggles for sport? That's the Dark Lord's way, not ours."

Tonks sighs.

"True."

McGonagall's grin is toothy. Fanged almost, like part of her cat shape was manifesting.

"They were so terribly interested in seeming _normal_. The husband is viscously homopobic and the wife wants to be the most conventional person on the block. So I transported them to a place in San Francisco called Castro Street and got them a new identify as a family who runs a cleaning service for muggle sex clubs. Fixed up the floorboards in their apartment with runes giving off a permanent confundus charm. They now think it is simply too much work to move somewhere that doesn't frighten them so much."

Tonks laughs so hard she backpedals into a chair and goes sprawling.

"Killing them would have been easier on them," she finally manages to wheeze out.

"Precisely."

**Author's Note:**

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